Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks Take on the White House in Riveting New Trailer for 'The Post'

The beloved actors star in Steven Spielberg's upcoming film, The Post, which tells the true story of when, in 1971, the Washington Post's Kay Graham (Streep), the country's first female newspaper publisher, teamed up with editor Ben Bradlee (Hanks) to expose a cover-up about the U.S.'s involvement in Vietnam that spanned over four presidents.

The first trailer for the movie, which hits select theaters on Dec. 22 and will go wide on Jan. 12, builds intensity by showing the risks Graham and Bradlee faced when they went up against the government.

"We could all go to prison,” Hanks says in the trailer. “What will happen if we don’t publish? We will lose. The country will lose."

In another riveting moment, he tells Streep, "The way they lied, those days have to be over."

In addition to Hanks and Streep, the film stars Alison Brie, Bob Odenkirk, David Cross, Sarah Paulson and Jesse Plemons. On top of that, The Americans' Matthew Rhys and The West Wing's Bradley Whitford also have parts in the movie -- and fans know they aren't strangers to political drama!

Hanks and Streep have not shied away this year from sharing their political views and celebrating journalism.

Earlier this year, the 61-year-old actor gifted the White House Press Corps with an espresso machine that included a note encouraging the journalists to "keep up the good fight for Truth, Justice and the American Way. Especially the Truth part."

"The whip of the executive, through a Twitter feed, can lash and intimidate, punish and humiliate, delegitimize the press and imagined enemies with spasmodic regularity and easily provoked predictability," Streep said during the 2017 Human Rights Campaign Greater New York Gala. "We have the right to live our lives, with God or without, as we choose. There is a prohibition against the establishment of a state religion in our Constitution, and we have the right to choose with whom we live, whom we love and who and what gets to interfere with our bodies."